Why Obama Betrayed the Iranian People

Why did President Obama refuse to support the demonstrators in Iran in 2009, but supported the "Arab Spring" in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere more recently?In 2009, demonstrators filled the streets of Iran, denouncing the regime and crying out for freedom. It was a glorious opportunity for the leader of the free world to demonstrate his support for free people everywhere and strike a decisive blow against the bloody regime that had considered itself at war with the United States for three decades.

But Barack Obama didn't help them. Quite the contrary. The leader of the free world was too busy extending his hand to those same mullahs.

It was monstrous when Obama stood by and did nothing during the abortive Iranian revolution; instead, he bought ice cream and posed for photo ops on the golf course while the only revolution against Islamic rule in a Muslim country was taking flight in Iran.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed one reason why last week: the Obama administration's Iranian advisers told them not to express support for the protesters.

"At the time," Hillary said, "the most insistent voices within the Green Movement and the supporters from outside of Iran were that we, the United States, had to be very careful not to look like what was happening inside Iran was directed by... the United States. So we were torn. ... [W]e kept being cautioned that we would put people's lives in danger, we would discredit the movement, we would undermine their aspirations."

Now the Foundation for Democracy in Iran has revealed that Hillary's advisors on Iran included Trita Parsi.

Trita Parsi is the president of the George Soros-funded National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a powerful Iranian lobbying group in Washington. Arash Irandoost of the Pro-Democracy Movement of Iran calls Parsi "an intellectually dishonest regime apologist and an unofficial and unregistered lobbyist for the Iranian regime." According to Irandoost, "Trita Parsi contributes to the regime's agenda and serves the interests of those in power in the Islamic Republic of Iran, not the Iranians, nor the Iranian-Americans."

And the Progressive American-Iranian Committee says that when NIAC and Parsi received funding for various projects from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), "NIAC's projects were approved and welcomed by the Iranian regime." NIAC coordinated its work inside Iran with Hamyaran, a "government initiated agency incepted, initiated, founded and managed by the Iranian regime." NIAC and Parsi even lobbied the U.S. Congress to "stop appropriating funds for independent democratic movements and NGOs that were not under Hamyaran or regime's control."

Not surprisingly, Parsi opposes sanctions against the Islamic Republic, claiming that "imposing new sanctions prior to diplomacy having begun will only decrease the chances of successful diplomacy." The NIAC has opposed sanctions for quite some time. Iranian dissident Hassan Daioleslam notes that "in 2008, when [the] U.S. Congress was showing some teeth to the Iranian regime," a coalition of Islamic groups, antiwar groups, and others founded the Campaign for New American Policy on Iran to fight against new sanctions against Iran called for by the advisory resolution H.R. 362. This resolution was not passed, and "NIAC and Parsi," says Daioleslam, "were on top of this event."

No strike on Iran. No sanctions. Just diplomacy -- with a genocidally inclined and fanatically intransigent regime whose contempt for Obama's overtures made the president look increasingly beggarly as his presidency wore on.

It is no mystery why many wonder which side NIAC is really on. And as long as it continued to wield such influence in Washington and held the ear of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the freedom-fighters in Tehran didn't stand a chance.

From the beginning of the unrest, the CIA should have been at work inside Iran, helping the dissidents and reformers and strategizing about the removal of the country's nuclear weapons. And the president of the United States should have spoken out strongly in favor of the demonstrators, and freedom. But instead, Obama said: "I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran's affairs."

Imagine: the people of Iran -- not the jihadis and the devout, but the women and the secularists -- were all calling for the head of the snake. Iran is indeed the head of the snake. Imagine the direction that the world might have taken if the greatest force for good, the United States, had stepped in to help the people of Iran remove that key part of the Axis of Evil. Iran is now doing business as Hezb'allah in Lebanon and is the engine and puppetmaster behind Syria. It supports Hamas and the Taliban, is agitating the Shia in Bahrain, and more.

And if that weren't heinous enough, now the colluder in the White House is hiding behind his empty shell of a secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as she throws the blame for the administration's betrayal of the Iranian demonstrators onto the stealth jihadists and Khomeini-aligned quislings they threw in with. They should have thrown them out of country for working for our mortal enemy.

History will not be kind to Obama for his siding with evil and brutally aggressive oppression over freedom.